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Now, more than ever, it feels like the pressure is on to hash out complex issues in a hurry—on Twitter and Facebook, in attention-grabbing headlines. In a time of quick reactions and heightened polarization, the deeply researched and rigorously reviewed academic books published by university presses can provide the context, data, and nuance that help us all to better understand current events. This has never been more relevant than it is than now, as we reflect on the first week of a new US presidency and the end of Academic Book Week. Below, please find a sampling of titles from […]

We at University of Michigan Press are pleased to share that William Cheng’s new book, Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good, received this year’s Philip Brett Award from the American Musicological Society. Philip Brett (1937–2002) was a beloved professor and a pioneer of queer music scholarship. The book, an urgent treatise on the ethical stakes of contemporary musical scholarship and citizenship, was celebrated during the AMS annual meeting. During this meeting (which happened to take place this year in Cheng’s hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia), the Society praised Just Vibrations, calling it “a nuanced and intersectional work that meets concerns […]

The following essay was written by Stephanie Steinberg, editor of In the Name of Editorial Freedom, a University of Michigan Press publication that will be released in September. Stephanie and other contributors to the book will be appearing at a number of promotional events in the coming months. A list of those events appears at the end of this post. If you’re a University of Michigan alum, you may have vivid memories of rallies in the Diag, concerts in Hill Auditorium or victories in the Big House. Odds are you sat in class debating the implications of Brown v. Board of Education or […]

The weekend May sprung into June, I attended the 2015 Bear River Writers’ Conference at Camp Michigania up on Walloon Lake (where Ernest Hemingway used to spend his summers as a kid), 250 miles north of Ann Arbor, a little south of Petoskey. Sponsored by the University of Michigan Department of English, Bear River is rich with writing workshops, readings, panels (often related to publishing), and craft talks. Directed by University of Michigan faculty member and poet Keith Taylor, the annual conference—now in its fifteenth year—is regularly attended by some of the University’s most prestigious creative writing faculty as well […]

The media world mourns the passing of David Carr, the forward-thinking media columnist at the New York Times. Carr, 58, died Thursday evening after collapsing in the Times newsroom. Shortly before his unexpected death, Carr moderated a panel at the New School on Citizenfour with director Laura Poitras, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and whistleblower Edward Snowden. Video of the discussion is available at the Times’ TimesTalks site. Carr established himself as a respected and thoughtful culture writer and media analyst, and was “an early evangelist” for social media, according to his Times obituary. His weekly Media Equation column was an especially valuable resource for […]